


cheats and liars

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: (not as a couple), Dubious Ethics, F/M, Past Violence/Coercion, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Undercover, flirting as an information gathering tactic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-06 02:26:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11591019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Jyn's perfectly prepared to use her past - or anything else that comes to hand - as a weapon.





	cheats and liars

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for urituretloquitur on tumblr:
> 
> "Jyn and Cassian on an undercover mission together--their cover is not as a couple!--and one (i'd prefer jyn bc we see a lot of cassian in this role, i think, but up to you!) has to get flirty for information with a target (I really am only thinking slight flirtation, but you can take it how you will). Can be lighthearted or angsty!"

“Kestrel!” someone called out, in the middle of a dingy mall. Jyn had to think for a good moment before she recognised the voice by the face attached to it, reflected in the smudged and spider-webbed glass of the shopfront beside her.

She painted a smile onto her face as she stopped and turned. Adem had always been nice enough, and was unlikely to sell her out straight away, but she would be late to meet Cassian if he kept her here. Besides, this really wasn’t the kind of place to hesitate.

“I’m surprised to see you around here again,” Adem said, joining her.

Jyn looked round and shrugged carelessly. “Yeah, well. Where the boss goes, I follow.”

Adem raised his eyebrows. “The boss? You used to be your own woman, if I remember right.”

Jyn’s eyebrows flickered. When Adem had known her, she’d been sabotaging Imperial installations on behalf of a local resistance group, but if Adem didn’t realise that she’d mostly been doing so to pay off a debt accrued by eating and bleeding, he was stupider than she’d thought. “Self-employment has no job security. We all get old.”

A shadow passed across Adem’s round, sharp-chinned face. “If we’re lucky,” he said, and then shook his head. “Kess -”

“I go by Ella now,” she said. It wasn’t true, but it was her fake name for this mission. “The boss thinks it’s classier. Does a bit better with his fancy Coruscant friends.”

Adem’s brows crinkled. “What do you do for him?”

Jyn looked him dead in the eyes. “I solve problems,” she said. It was the exact same thing she’d told him the first time they’d met, when he hadn’t been much more than a kid, nineteen and wet behind the ears.

“Oh,” Adem said. “Well.” His face twisted in a way that made Jyn think he was now old enough to know what she meant. “Playing to your strengths.”

“Always,” Jyn said impassively.

Adem jammed his hands into his pockets. Idly, Jyn counted his concealed weapons. “If you’re a fixer for this guy, why have you left him alone here?”

“He has a separate bodyguard. I don’t solve that kind of problem unless it comes to me.” Jyn twisted on her heel, arms folded, narrow gaze flickering over the dirty floor and haphazardly defaced walls, the makeshift stalls and the shops that had taken up residence in formerly gleaming alcoves. Half the lights were dying. Jyn could smell something rotting, and a glitterstim dealer had been trying to catch her eye for the last fifteen minutes.

The mall had once been a shrine to commerce on the planet’s biggest city, but that was before the local governor had fallen out of favour with the Imperials and had had to leave town very quickly. His stakes in the local economy had been sold off equally quickly, including the shining new mall with its upscale shops and aspirations; the businesspeople had soon seen the virtues of not being associated with him, and had fled. The tenants who had taken over were just as commercial and rather less salubrious, and benefited from the equally insalubrious tastes of the replacement governor. There was nothing here that wasn’t for sale, including information.

That was why Jyn, Cassian, and Kaytoo - or rather, Ella, Jazent, and X-3 - were here. Jazent was an ambitious and amoral businessman who dealt in a patented form of durasteel, and was looking to sell it to the factories that covered half the planet: he’d hired a ‘private secretary’ to bribe and threaten, and owned a security droid. Cassian, by contrast, wanted a tour of the biggest factories and a way to disable them or siphon off the privileged information they held on Imperial supplies and processing, while Jyn and Kaytoo were mostly present to hit things or sabotage them, as required. None of them were enjoying themselves.

Right this moment, Jyn was uncomfortably aware, she was missing a rendez-vous with the other two.

“What are you doing these days?” she asked.

“Same old line of business,” Adem said, meaning rebellion. “Got a big project on at the moment now, though.”

Jyn arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“You know what factory work’s like.” Adem’s mouth curled a little: the tiniest giveaway.

Alarm bells started ringing in Jyn’s head; she kept her face blank. “I do.” She jerked her head along the corridor they were standing in. “Let’s go before someone tries to pick our pockets. I’m supposed to be with the boss, anyway, but he’s meant to be going to meet someone, so we could get lunch.” She tilted her head. “If you liked.”

Adem’s eyes flickered over her body, and Jyn didn’t miss it. “Yeah. Talk about old times.”

They were walking past dusty shops, grimy stalls and slumped bodies when Jyn spotted Cassian and Kaytoo hurrying towards them without looking like they were hurrying. Cassian was wearing a particularly thunderous scowl.

“Sorry, sir,” Jyn said preemptively. “Unavoidably delayed. But I met a contact who may have some useful information.”

Cassian gave Adem a cursory glance and didn’t introduce himself. Jazent Derweni didn’t care about day labourers with a sleazy edge, and that was how Adem had dressed himself.

“Very well,” Cassian snapped. His accent was almost Core, but had the sharpness of someone who was faking it overzealously; Jyn was impressed. “Ella, I’m warning you about this casual attitude. I expect punctuality.”

Jyn inclined her head. “Sir.”

Cassian checked Jazent’s chronometer. “I have a lunch meeting with an associate. Stay close.”

“Sir,” Jyn repeated.

Cassian’s meeting was at a restaurant on the edge of the most fashionable part of town, where it bled into an area that was still a little shabby and a little riskier - at least by the standards of the overdressed people lunching at tables coated in white cloth and surrounded by leafy plants; Jyn looked at the children playing on the streets and residents gossiping by shops, and thought it seemed perfectly nice. Adem, meanwhile, looked at the restaurant and let out a small, satisfied grunt.

“We can go to the diner,” he said, pointing to a building diagonally across the street. “It’s run by a friend of mine.”

Jyn eyed up the diner with its smudged glass front and plastic sign, and glanced at Cassian, who was striding towards the restaurant. “Sure,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind me sitting in the window. Mr Derweni sometimes calls on me unpredictably.”

“Can’t he just comm you?”

“He could, but that doesn’t suit his ideas of having staff,” Jyn said, and let amusement bleed lazy into her voice. She raised a hand. “Mr Derweni.”

Cassian stopped and gave her an irritable look.

Jyn gestured at the diner. “I’ll be there if you need me.”

“Noted, Ella,” Cassian said, and marched on.

Jyn smirked at Adem, and stepped casually across the street with him, bypassing an overloaded speeder and a pile of rubbish that someone had dumped. A Twi’lek street girl was picking through it, which made Jyn’s heart ache; cynically, she glanced around, looking for the police who would undoubtedly come to move the girl on.

“He keeps you on a tight leash,” Adem remarked, pushing the diner door open. Its metal was dented but well-cared for, and although the decorations inside wouldn’t meet with the approval of the clientele across the street, it looked scrupulously clean. There was also a steady stream of customers, which suggested the food was - at the very least - edible.

Jyn shrugged. “He likes to feel in control. I more or less do as I please.” She grinned at Adem. “He wants to get the job done around here, he needs me. He’s never even been in this sector before.”

They took a seat at a table by the window in a corner, where Jyn could see Cassian, seated in a very similar corner across the street. It was as much part of his cover as anything else; for Jazent Derweni to be seen wining and dining someone whose information he’d need lent credence to his reasons for being planetside. The fact that he could see her too wasn’t entirely irrelevant to Jazent, either. Jazent relied heavily on Ella, and became peevish when she wouldn’t indulge his whims, or was unexpectedly out of sight.

“What’s he do?”

Jyn pulled a face. “Makes different types of durasteel. Don’t ask me the technical details. It’s boring. He wants to get in on the market here.” She met Adem’s eyes as she flicked through the menu. “All those factories.”

Adem’s indrawn breath was slight but there. “So you’ll be doing the tour.”

Jyn nodded, and let a smile curl across her mouth. “Which one do you work at?”

“Depends,” Adem said. He must have stretched his feet out under the table; they brushed Jyn’s. She let her smile widen, and stretched her own legs out in turn. “Whichever one will pay me at the moment.”

There was a brief break to order food and drinks, and then they were alone again.

“Do you get evenings off?” Adem asked, leaning across the table a little.

Through the glass, Jyn could see Cassian glance over. She leaned back in her seat, accepted the drink that was brought to her, and cracked open the can. “Depends,” she echoed Adem. “Sometimes.” She let her eyes rest on Adem.

“I hope you’ll have time to see old friends,” Adem said. His voice was heavy with meaning.

Jyn kept a straight face. He hadn’t been any more subtle at nineteen. “I’m counting on it,” she said, sitting forward and smiling confidentially at him.

Cassian was better at this; he could become a different person entirely, whoever his mark wanted to see. But Jyn already knew she could be what Adem wanted: she remembered being Kestrel, how the recklessness and hardness of that half-broken and wary young woman had attracted him. And while she’d never been any good at flirting with anyone she cared for - had always gone out of her way to avoid people like that, afraid of the consequences of getting close - she knew the cheap tricks any sentient might have to use in a difficult situation.

The cheap tricks never worked on Cassian. Trying them always made Cassian look uncomfortable, suspicious and slightly annoyed, which made Jyn break character and snort with laughter.

There was a brief pause. Jyn could still see Cassian looking at them, brief glances that his lunch companion wouldn’t even notice, no special expressions attached.

“I know you’re still in the same line of work,” Adem said, stirring his drink idly with one dirty finger. “But are you still in the same line of business?”

Jyn went still for a moment, and then she sat back in her chair, tugging slightly at her smart neutral jacket and tunic with the Derweni Technologies pin. “It’s been a while,” she said. “Opportunities… change.”

“That didn’t sound like a no to me,” Adem said, his eyes intent on hers.

Jyn bit her lip and looked down at the table; then she looked up at Adem through her lashes. “It wasn’t,” she said, and smiled her most predatory smile.

Late that night, Jyn knocked on Cassian’s door, wearing Ella’s perpetually bored and narrow-eyed expression. Kaytoo opened the door, visibly stifled a smart remark - Jyn was glad there were no hotel staff to see - and let her in.

“Thank you,” Cassian said, loud and querulous, clear enough to be heard outside in the corridor if anyone were listening. “ _Finally_. Ella, I want to go over tomorrow’s schedule -“

Jyn let out one of Ella’s small sighs. Ella was bored of Jazent and his spoiled ways.

The door slammed shut, and Cassian dropped at least one layer of Jazent, and looked at her with his own eyes. Jyn made a small hand-sign where both he and Kaytoo could see it.  _Bugs?_

“No,” Kaytoo said. “I swept the room myself. Twice.”

Jyn let her shoulders relax. “Thanks, Kaytoo.”

Cassian was sitting on the bed, a datapad and slim silicone-coated briefcase beside him; Jyn went and sat on the desk. Not on the chair, on the desk, feet swinging against the elaborately moulded plastic.

Cassian eyed her and looked away, then shuffled the datapad into his briefcase. “Who’s the contact?”

“His name’s Adem. Local rebel with a small r - he belongs to a group that got me out of Imperial pre-holding once. After a riot.” Jyn’s hands curled tight on the edge of the desk, remembering hard concrete and sick dizziness and an unspoken demand for gratitude. “I was… a bit of a mess. I worked with them to pay off the medical debt.”

Jyn knew all Cassian’s silences now. This one was angry.

“Adem doesn’t know that’s why I stayed,” Jyn said. “He doesn’t know I was a Partisan, or that I’m a Rebel.” She swallowed: that word still sat oddly in her mouth. “He doesn’t have a clue who you are. He bought my cover - he just thinks my name is Kestrel, and you call me Ella because you think it’s classier.”

Cassian snorted.

Jyn let her mouth curve slightly in a very small smile, and looked off to the side.

“You think we can use him?” Cassian asked.

“I know we can. He has plans to do more or less the same thing we want to do.” Jyn looked back at Cassian. “Only he wants to blow all the factories up. I don’t know if that’s his point of view or an agreed strategy yet. He’s said he’ll get me an invite back into the group, because I can be useful.”

“We’ll run back-up,” Cassian said. It wasn’t a question; once that would have infuriated Jyn, but not any more. “And we don’t want too many explosions; we need their information more.”

“I could always tell them  I couldn’t find a way to blow up the ones he thinks are key, anyway,” Jyn said practically. “We get our information and some disruptions, he gets the big bangs he wants, our cover stays intact. Win-win.”

“That plan has an acceptable statistical chance of success,” Kaytoo observed, with something that verged on approval.

“Thank you,” Jyn said sarcastically, but her eyes were on Cassian.

“It’s never that simple,” Cassian said, but Jyn could see in his face that he’d accepted her argument.

There was a silence.

“He thinks he knows you,” Cassian said finally, and looked at Kaytoo. “Kay. Give us a minute.”

“I don’t see why that’s necessary.”

“ _Kay_.” Cassian rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Please just do it.”

If Kaytoo were human he’d have put his nose in the air and flounced. As it was, he said “If you insist,” in his snottiest tone, and marched outside to stand guard.

The silence in Jazent Derweni’s hotel room grew very thick.

At last, Jyn sighed and crossed her legs, and opened her mouth to break the impasse. “I know what he wants.”

“I wondered,” Cassian said evenly. His hands were loosely clasped, elbows resting on his knees; he wasn’t fidgeting. Jyn had never seen him do anything that undisciplined. His dark eyes were very level, and his shoulders rigid.

“I’m not stupid,” Jyn replied, watching him tense further. She could probably get those shoulders to relax and those eyes to soften if she went over there and pushed at his chest, knocked him onto his back on the bed and kissed him. But…

She licked her lips. “I’m not planning to sleep with him,” she said. “Flirt a bit more, yes, if that’s what he’s looking for. But no sex. I don’t know where he’s been.” That won her a tiny twitch of Cassian’s lips. “And I’m not as good a liar as you are. I don’t think I could pull it off.”

Cassian nodded very slightly, and looked down at his hands.

There was a chill around Jyn’s heart. She didn’t like it. 

She slipped off the desk and took the three steps to the bed, until she was standing directly before his knees; he raised his eyes to look up at her, glancing through thick lashes and heavy fringe to meet her gaze. She slid her fingers through his hair, let her fingertips ghost softly over his cheeks.

“Hey,” she said, “I miss you,” and at last, he smiled. The tension eased.

Cassian set his hands on Jyn’s waist. His thumbs rubbed slow, thoughtful crescents over her stomach, and when she rested her palms on his jaw and tilted his face up for a kiss his mouth opened to hers immediately.

Cassian always touched her like he meant it, and he touched her all the time. Jyn never realised how much she loved that until she couldn’t have it, however temporarily. Ella had nothing but scorn for Jazent; Jazent looked on Ella as a sort of convenience, like an organic droid. They would certainly never lay hands on each other.

“Adem doesn’t kiss as well as you do,” she breathed, into the space between them.

Cassian smiled instinctively, dark and triumphant, and Jyn laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at [ rain-sleet-snow](https://rain-sleet-snow.tumblr.com/). Come and say hi! :)


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